I want to go back and get more of that funky stuff

The obvious seventies rock band beginning with P is Pink Floyd. But frankly I'm sick of 'em. So we gonna do some other stuff to-day, kids.

Paper Airplane Machine Gun / Papierflieger-Maschinenpistole

Keith thought I would like this. And he was right.



What can I say. I'm a tech-nerd. But this guy is a tech-wizard. He mostly designed this with printed parts which he then sent to a contract 3D printer.

A little tinkering from me that shows what you can do with 3D printers today. Most parts of this paper airplane machine gun had printed by fabberhouse.de (the rest of them are to buy via Internet or hardware store). By the way, I use a cordless screwdriver from China for driving.

Est Quod Est Phrase of the Week

The phrase of the week, IMHO, is "free-range dog meat." I found it in this HuffPo piece from December 2009.

Within Thailand, this no-stoplight town known as Ta Rae evokes free-range dog meat the way Memphis conjures thoughts of hickory-smoked ribs. The village does not showcase its signature industry, which relies on bribery and crime. Nor does it openly embrace dog eating, regarded by mainstream Thai society as hickish and uncivilized. The local dog meat vendors operate on a dusty side street, outside the town's sanctioned outdoor market. But the village's discretion is for naught: Ta Rae is regionally known as a nerve center in Southeast Asia's stray dog meat trade. Here, Northeast Thailand's seemingly infinite supply of wild dogs are corralled, graded, crammed into wire cages and prepped for export. The destination: Vietnam, where demand for grilled dog sells for triple the price of pork.

So the remaining questions. Is eating a free-range dog a sacramental thing to do (reference)? I mean this meat has got to be organic, right? Even if it is a bit diseased.

If you watch the video on the HuffPo page, you'll probably laugh at the line "[A]nimal welfare advocates... think the dog trade taints Thailand's reputation." What reputation is that? Give me a break.

Public Service Announcement (without guitars)

We had a fire in our house, in our kids' room. It happened a few weekends ago. No one got hurt, the damage was mostly from smoke, and I really don't want to talk about it in any more detail. But here's what you need to know--the culprit:

...and here's the scoop on the exact model. Basically each time these SMC oscillating fans oscillate they get a step closer to shorting out the cord which comes up through the stand. So if you have one of these, you may want to replace it with something newer.

Ironic and Coincidental

What do you think I got for Father's Day? Ironically my wife got me the Sh*t My Dad Says book, which is funny because as I mentioned earlier the subject of the book is so anti-Father's Day. It came out last year, but who cares. You're always behind when you have five kids.

Also received awesome homemade cards. Homemade cards on Father's Day mean I didn't have to pay for store bought F-day cards with stale aphorisms, the definition of loser. Instead I got penguins and Pokemons on my cards with secret codes which had to be explained to me. Definition of awesome.

Plus we went to Panera and ate out on the patio which is like the top thing to me right now after that ridiculous winter.

Hello

I think it's great that the blogosphere exists. It's a hobby that you can inflict on other people–I mean that you can share with other people. It's sort of like writing something and then publishing it on the web. Wait–that's exactly what it is... what was I thinkiing?

We bought a new house. Then we moved into it. I thought the buying process was sort of difficult, but it wasn't nearly a hard as moving all our stuff. Hindsight is 20/20, and now I wish that we had just put all the furniture on Craigslist and then bought other stuff from Craig as needed. That's where most of it came from to begin with, or so my wife tells me. We could have given most of the kids' clothes away and by the next week people would have donated everything back. I can't help it that we look like poor people. Well, no, that's not true–I just like getting free clothes from people who only planned to have one or two kids. It's always stuff from places that I've heard are really nice, like Baby Gap, etc.

Back to buying the house. Getting final approval was kind of a bitch. I thought they were going to want urine and stool samples by the time it was over! But they didn't, so the mortgage broker had them mailed back to my old address. I emailed a thank you note to him and added "It's a good thing the weather has been so cold, huh." He merely replied with a link.

The dust is settling here finally. We're happy to be closer to the school where our oldest two go ever since we "gave up" on home-schooling last year, and closer to our parish and of course, SBUX. And moving refreshes your memory with regards to important hierarchies in life, e.g., dryers weigh less than washers, washers weigh less than the piano that your mom who is still alive gave you, etc.

03/06/09 12:15:18

I don't have a lot to say right now. Just wanted to commemorate the cool date and time. I've been counting by threes ever since watching Schoolhouse Rock when I was 6 or 7. Now the kids watch the recently-released DVDs and go around singing the songs which is pretty cool.

Anyway, was just listening to the podcast on this page, about 5 weeks old, but pretty good.

Also the Iowahawk piece is funny. As a companion piece to that, Kathleen sent me this audio link to a radio altercation between David Frum and Mark Levin. Usually Mark Levin tends to get overly excited and Frum is calm and collected; in this audio is basically the other way around. Another illustration of the absurdity of attacking Rush Limbaugh.

Have a good weekend.